Pilates Voice Lessons Milwaukee WI

Local resource for pilates voice lessons in Milwaukee, WI. Includes detailed information on local businesses that provide access to pilates voice lessons, pilates classes, fitness classes, and yoga classes, as well as advice and content on wellness, nutrition, holistic health, and alternative medicine through exercise.

Pilates and the Voice

Margi Sharp Douglas, shown here performing in in Magis Theatre Company’s production of “Great Divorce,” is also owner of Pilates Garage in Brooklyn, New York. Below she details how she was able to incorporate a vocal warmup in her Pilates work.

As a professional actor and Pilates instructor, over the last couple of years I have worked to integrate Pilates technique into a voice and body warm up for the stage. Working with fellow Columbia MFA acting graduates, along with some adjustments given by Alexander teachers and less traditional Pilates masters in New York, I developed a “Voice and Pilates” series that has become a staple of Magis Theatre Company’s weekly actor training in NYC.

The goal of the workshop is to create core awareness and strength for the actor in movement, while maintaining an open throat, spontaneous breath and a resonant sound to stay safely and vocally connected, in even the most physically challenging role.

Recently, I teamed up with master Pilates teacher Joan Murray, who had been instructing singers in the Opera Masters Program at Julliard. She discovered that she could help them most by first freeing the musculature of the head, neck and shoulders. Then, she worked with them to strengthen all the core stabilizers in an isometric way, so as to prevent the abdominals from being too short to allow the diaphragm to expand. Her results helped one singer become a Metropolitan Opera Competition finalist in 2007.

We found our goals were very similar and we began doing workshops for singers and actors or anyone who wanted to do Pilates with less tension in the head and neck and walk out with a more open, free sound in their voices.

The exercises below were developed by Joan and myself separately and put together in a series for our workshops. The initial focus is on subtracting external tension and opening up the resonating chambers of the body for a deeper, resonant voice. The work then progresses toward finding core awareness and stability in connection with making sound. And finally, the mover is challenged to work through vigorous choreography combined with simple vocalizations.

Voice and Pilates Exercises:

1.Breathing Prone on Squishy Ball: Lay on your stomach placing a deflated ball under the CPR point at the base of the ribs, hands resting under the shoulders. Breathe very deeply allowing the breath to expand the back ribs. With each exhalation, allow the shoulders and neck release toward the floor. 2. Tapping into Movement of Diaphragm: Lie in rest position, knees bent, feet flat and squishy ball underneath the head. Hands rest on the low belly, elbows bent. Without changing your rhythm, begin to take note of the breath dropping down filling your hands and then falling back out as air passes through your lips. Wet your lips and then part them slightly open. Feel the air’s coolness as it comes in, and the warmth as it falls back out. Stay with this for a few natural br...

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